SPEAKER_01 0:00

BBC Gardeners World Autumn Fair returns to the amazingly beautiful setting of Audley End House and Gardens near Saffron Walden in Essex from Friday the 11th to Sunday the 13th of September. I'm delighted that joining me to look ahead to the show and to autumn. It's Lucy Chamberlain. Lucy, we've only just put summer to bed, haven't we? And now we're looking towards the autumn, but it's a great location for a show.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

It is, it's it's a beautiful location. If you haven't been to Audley End House and Gardens, I strongly suggest it. Being an Essex lady myself, I have visited before, um, under my own scheme before the shows. Um and it it's it's just a gorgeous setting and such a wonderful place to have a show that's that's got lots of content to it, lots of energy. Um it's a it's it's a beautiful setting for the the the autumn fair.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

What can people expect? There'll be a lot of people who have never been before. Um so on the site, what will be there? What can they expect to see?

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Yeah, so there will be lots and lots of plants, specialist nurseries. So if you uh really have a hankering for exotics, for tropicals, for hydrangeas, for roses, for carnivorous plants, for house plants, whatever you really want to get involved in heavily, there'll be a nursery there supplying those plants, which is wonderful. You've got the wonderful inspiring bedding schemes that the Audley End garden team have put together, they look stunning. You've also got the kitchen garden tours. Now the kitchen garden is a really beautiful part of Audley End, which is separate to the house, and I'll be doing garden tours there with the Audley End Gardens team and also Saul Walker will be both giving the tours of those kitchen gardens. And it's a real if you want to maybe get away from the hustle and bustle and the business and the crowds, coming to the kitchen garden where it's a bit more peaceful, it's a large area, you've got lovely pathways, trained fruit trees, you've got all the fruit and vegetables and herbs growing, lots of cut flowers as well for the house. It's um it's like another little lost world. Um I love being over there. I love doing the show site as well, but to go to the kitchen gardens and just walk around and talk about that to the visitors is it is a lovely thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Uh you had great success at uh summer with your Make A Meter Matter that uh that you did with Degraft Mensa. Are you doing that again or a similar thing at uh autumn show?

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Yes, we are. We are. It'll be lovely to work with Degraft again, and we're we're very passionate about this Make A Meter Matter campaign because it's once something that people can connect with because we're just asking folk to sign up maybe one square meter of their outdoor space to growing plants. Um and anything they can do to green up a space is uh it's positive for you, for your mental health. You can maybe grow some food there as well. But it's also as if lots of people pledge a square meter to this campaign, then um the more people sign up, the more green spaces we can create, and it's collectively that's that's very powerful, very powerful thing to do. So, yes, looking forward to that.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

And it also shows people that haven't got big gardens but have a patio area or they can build a small raised bed to really cram quite a lot into a small area and and and be productive about things they can eat.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Growing my own food is something I really strongly love doing. And luckily, these the make a meat a matter gardens are very grow your own based. Um, so uh I'm I'm very mindful that in autumn a lot of people have maybe waste for their allotment. They've got their um tomato plants or their sweet corn plants or other crops coming to maybe the end of the time by September. Uh and so composting is something that people are very, very keen on. So we're going to have a meter devoted to how you can compost in a small space. Because compost heaps actually are um a really great melting pot of lots of macro fauna, microfauna, lots of bug species, creatures, um, and that in itself is very valuable to the environment. So composting, generating your own compost to you reuse in the garden is a wonderful thing to do, and I say you can do it in a very small scale.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Composting, interesting one. I was talking to somebody recently, they said, Oh, I've I've got a compost bin, I just throw everything in it. And I thought, oh, that sounded alarm bells because you do need to think about what you put in there and the and the sort of rotting rates and things, don't you?

SPEAKER_00 4:16

You do, you do. Um if you want to get when I when I was at uni, we studied composting in a lot of detail, and there's this sort of um the science is you want to get a ratio of greens to browns, um, and it's normally about 70% green to 30% brown, but uh, and that's basically your carbon, the carbon is the brown element, and the nitrogen is the green element. But what we're talking about is basically have a good mixture. If I bring it back down to the reality of when we're actually practically guarding, have a good mixture of green, soft stuff like your lawn clippings, but also maybe woody prunings, um, you know, if you've got like um old sweet corn stems or um things that have gone brown and a bit gnarly, those are the woody element, and that's getting that balance allows lots of air into the heap, but also gives you the moisture that you need from that sort of soft sappy element to encourage decomposition to occur because otherwise everything's just dry and it doesn't rot. You need moisture um for the whole thing to kind of like kickstart. Like a yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

I guess it's important to keep food out of this. Food waste is a is a different uh approach, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Yeah, I think you could if you're you know, sort of it's in the in the kitchen peeling potatoes or carrots or something, or chopping the tops of beetroot, all those non-cooked edible scraps can go in the heat, but you're absolutely right. Once you cook items, especially if you've been adding flavourings and you know, there might be some meat in your in your meal or something that you know, the oils as well, those things are a little bit more difficult to rot down, but also they can encourage things that maybe people aren't keen on in their garden, such as rats and that sort of thing, because of the smell, the you know, that wonderful, exciting smell. We're creating things that we want to eat in our kitchen. So um those sorts of items may be best are put somewhere different. You can get um enclosed systems that are good for cooked garden waste. Boschaky is one of them. Um there's lots of things at the that can deal with that matter. But yeah, raw garden ingredients, prunings, clippings, all that kind of stuff, peelings, they are great for compost.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

A friend of mine swears by using fresh coffee grounds uh and and putting the he mixes them into the soil. Is that a good idea?

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Yeah, you can do it, yeah. I think in initially when coffee grounds came to the public awareness, it was thought that they were a good slug and snail deterrent. Um it would have been great, but I think we're finding that maybe it's not as act as as um successful as other slug and snail controls. So, but yeah, uh you know, we are uh now becoming a nation not just of tea lovers but of coffee lovers. I've got a coffee machine at home. I can I I uh grind the beans and you end up with lots and lots of waste. So absolutely it's an organic material. It was perfectly acceptable to add that to your compost teap. And yeah, it's very coarse and aerated, so it's a good ingredient.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Absolutely. Uh lots of people uh will be coming to the show. The dates for the diary Friday the 11th to Sunday the 13th of September, the location, Audley End House and Gardens near Saffron Walden in Essex. Lots of information on the website. You can search bbcgardenersworldlive.com and look for autumn as to tell you how to buy tickets and who is going to be there, including the brilliant Lucy Chamberlain. Um Lucy, what uh what are the the key things that people should be doing in autumn? Because I've I've spoken to people who said, Oh well, my gardening year is over now, it's autumn, and I keep thinking, no, no, you've got a long way to go. Yeah. Yeah. It never stops the gardening year, does it?

SPEAKER_00 7:44

No, it doesn't. As a as a so garden is my profession, and I do various clients' gardens, and luckily they employ me year-round, which is great. But there's so much that you can do in the autumn and the winter. But one thing I would say that's changing is our springs. We're getting very dry springs now in the UK. Um, and we used to get, you know, uh April showers. Doesn't seem to be happening quite so much now. Um so I would say autumn is a key time for planting, sourcing plants and getting them in the ground because plants are much better in the ground when it's when the soil is moist, it's not baking hot, it's got it, it's it's not bone dry. So that lovely cool um conditions of you know autumn where the temperatures aren't quite so strong, but the ground is still lovely and moist from those rains. We've got the thunderstorms in in August now. That is a really good planting time. We don't tend to have so much of a window for planting in the spring anymore. So I would say definitely go to the shows in the summer, come to Gardner's World in the uh the shows, look at the plants that you want to buy, make a note of them, photograph the labels, and then purchase them in the autumn as well and get them in the ground then.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

September can be a lovely month as well, can't it? If you get you get that sort of hangover from the heat of August and it drifts into September, and they've got the the the sun is lower in the sky, and you've got the long shadows. It's it's a lovely time, and this autumn show really just it sort of captures all of that, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 9:09

It does, it does. It's absolutely key harvest time for all the the apples in the wall kitchen garden are ready and ripe and they're falling by the by the hour. The garden team do a great job of picking them up and using them in various products in the kitchens. But yeah, so autumn is a wonderful time to visit gardens. There's you know, you've got dailias and zinnias and the autumn bedding really shining, all the salvia are still going really strong. Um, so yeah, there's lots of colour and energy and life still in autumn. And um but there's obviously still some tasks to do as well to keep us busy.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Uh what's the latest time in the year, just finally, if you want to uh produce, say, things for Christmas? Um sprouts perhaps or or or other things that you might have on the table at Christmas. Is there a is there a real cut-off point? Is it is it that time in September? Is that too late?

SPEAKER_00 9:59

Yeah, it does uh sadly with Brussels sprouts, for example, they are a long-term crop, they're quite space hungry. So uh for a newcomer, I might be would say to them don't go for them just for in your first year. If you really love Brussels sprouts, you know, go them, but they are quite space hungry and time hungry plants. So in August, for example, um you can actually plant potatoes. So you get these ones called second cropping potatoes, and they will then bulk up and yield for you in August and in October and November. So then you can actually have store those and have them as new potatoes for your Christmas meal if you wanted to. But things like yeah, parsnips, brussels sprouts, um all those sort of cold season veg the leaks, they're best sown um in April or May. Um so make a note in the diary for next year to get those seeds.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Excellent advice, and I'm sure there will be lots and lots of people coming to Audley and House and Gardens in September to see your make a meter matter, to do the tours of the kitchen gardens and to bask in the late sunshine for the year. It's gonna be on the soon, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 11:04

It is fantastic, yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Good to see you.